# pandemic

Pronunciation: say "pan-DEM-ik" /pænˈdɛmɪk/

## Noun

1. A disease that spreads over a wide geographical area and affects a large proportion of the population.
   - Simple: A disease that spreads across many countries and infects a very large number of people.
   - _Health officials declared a pandemic once the virus reached every continent._
   - _Earlier pandemics, such as the 1918 influenza, killed millions worldwide._
3. The global outbreak of COVID-19 that began in late 2019, commonly referred to simply as the pandemic.
   - Simple: The worldwide spread of COVID-19 that began in 2019.
   - _Restaurants struggled to stay open throughout the pandemic._
   - _Many friendships moved online when the pandemic kept everyone indoors._

## Adjective

2. Describing a disease that is epidemic over a wide geographical area and affects a large proportion of the population.
   - Simple: Describing a disease that has spread across many countries and infected very many people.
   - _Officials warned that the outbreak was rapidly becoming pandemic in scale._
   - _Pandemic diseases demand coordinated responses across national borders._
4. General and widespread, used disapprovingly to compare something undesirable to the spread of a disease.
   - Simple: So widespread that it feels like a spreading disease, used in a disapproving way.
   - _Apathy toward voting seems pandemic among younger residents._
   - _The columnist condemned the city's pandemic indifference to the homeless._

## Adjective

5. Alternative letter-case form of Pandemic. *(rare)*
   - Simple: Alternative letter-case form of Pandemic. This rare small-letter spelling is about love of the body, not of the soul.
   - _The dialogue separates pandemic love, rooted in physical desire, from its celestial counterpart._
   - _Renaissance writers invoked the pandemic Venus to represent earthly, sensual passion._

## Origin

From Ancient Greek pándēmos ("of or belonging to all the people, public") plus the English suffix -ic. Pándēmos itself combines pan- ("all, every") with dêmos ("the common people"), and it can be compared with Late Latin pandēmus ("affecting all the people, general").

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/pandemic (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).